Who's the Fool?

I wonder how many people have actually have seen real Gold? Not the gold on your finger or around your neck. I mean real Gold, in it's original form. Yielded, mostly by force, from the earth with all of its impurities. We recognize it when we see it, pursue it, engage in territorial altercations, make or break governments with it. Gold drives the world's economy (some think it is oil, but you need the gold to purchase the oil).

In search for these pieces of the earthen treasure, we have also come across Pyrite, also known as "Fool's Gold". It has very similar characteristics of real Gold. It looks like gold but, it is not. True gold will shine through when you melt it and remove the impurities from it. The more pure the more valuable. People have tried to sell Pyrite as real gold, and many others have believed them (hence the nick name) only to find that with the exception as a novelty, there is no real value to it. A good scam to the uneducated, or those looking for the quick rich way. Choking away someone's money, or possession.

I can understand how people could be mislead. They want to believe in their riches. Most of us do it with the best of intention. We work hard, live our lives, try to be responsible, falter, fall and hopefully get back up again. Some fall more than others. Some falter just a bit and recover. We are all hard at work looking for our piece of metaphoric Gold. Wealth, family, a new car or truck, we determine what gold is to us. But sometimes, no matter how educated we think we are, or how hard we strive, we fall for the Pyrite. We think it's gold, chased it everyday until we believed we achieve ownership or mastered it. And then in the end we find pyrite. We did not have our eye on the real... just what we wanted to be real.

In the bible, Matthew 13:24, Jesus tells a parable of a property owner who sowed wheat in his fields. An enemy of the property owner, at night, scattered the seeds of Tares, (a weed) to mix in with the wheat. While growing, both the wheat and the Tares looks alike. When the Tares was discovered by one of owner's servant, they offered to take the weeds up so that it wouldn't choke the wheat. The owner, using sound judgement, didn't panic. He knew that if the servants weeded too soon, they may also pull up the wheat. He instructed them to wait until the wheat was full grown. They could then tell the difference between the wheat and Tares. The weeds were to be pulled up, bundled and burned, and then the wheat would be harvested.

The owner knew that he had put in true hard work. Although someone else may have come to hurt or destroy his work, there still was some good to be had. If the owner acted foolishly, and just worried about what looked like wheat, he would have lost his "gold".

I have to keep my eye on what is real, no matter how much I want different. When I have taken my time, listen to my inner voice calming me (God), and not force what I wanted, I usually did well. As much as I have cursed God in my past, both sober and drunk, I truly do not ever remember when he let me down.

If I rushed it, and lost sight of what I truly wanted, I was either choked by the Tares, or attempted to cash in the Pyrite someone else had sold me and got nothing.

Overall, what I learned was not to keep my eye on my "gold", but to keep my eye on God. He will deliver my goals (not gold) all of the time.

Exposure

When do we feel the most naked? Or maybe the better term should be "the most exposed"? Is it when we fail to achieve what we want others to believe, or is it when the failure is exposed to be the truth?


Just a question. Maybe it can be a topic someday.